We must ask why the kids are erupting with answers to the detriment of our instruction. If we can answer that, we will have found one of the big keys to one of the big doors to this approach to teaching. Are they erupting because they can’t contain themselves? Or because they don’t see anyone stopping them?
Take a deep breath on each question you ask. Bring balance to the class by your calm presence. Don’t fight their energy, guide it into the discussion. Do this by laser pointing to Rule #2. Use the Classroom Rules. Make them work for you.
Do all of this while smiling. You are the breath and calm presence who will remind their youthful energy that we cannot learn unless one person speaks and the others listen. Be happy with them. Ask the questions.
Each question generates an answer in the minds of many of the children. They just need a calm presence to remind them that one person speaks and the others listen. They need a calm leader. Back up your calmness with in-your-face jGR grades – honest ones. See:
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This is the art of teaching. You invite them to suggest cute answers, but you constantly – in the first weeks with new classes who are not trained in the rules – gently remind them via the laser pointer of the rules.
Those rules (resources page of this site/posters) are designed exactly for the eruptions. Work on teaching them in every moment of every noisy eruption what is expected in your classroom. Deep breath, smile, and laser point to the rule. They will calm down.
The noisy eruptions of too many answers and the ensuing chaos will not go away right away, but they will go away as you steer the ship through the storm. The storm will go away and you will know something.
When we go racing through the answers, accepting too many mediocre ones, allowing too much noise, we go to their level of childhood. But we cannot, for we are adults now.
We need the repetitions that circling provides to be heard by the kids! So stay in the moment generated by each question and make sure that everyone can hear and understand each thing that comes up.
Go for 99% comprehension by them. Check for understanding as per:
Work with individual kids. Ask a question, and if the child is noisy, if more than one kid is noisy, laser point to the rule they are breaking (in your case above it is Rule #2) and then turn back and look at the kids and listen to the answer and say yes or no.
Play the discipline card if necessary. Carla has recently offered a great approach to dealing with unruly kids here. I have my Three and Done thing – find it in the categories here. Others have their own plans for when a kid clearly crosses the line with inappropriate comments.
Consider that not having a specific calm reaction for rude kids – I have jGR on the grading side and Three and Done on the behavior side and those two things SHOULD be related in a language class – could tank your year before it gets off the ground. The most skilled person at CI has no chance without a consistently strong reaction to rude, unaware kids who need to be stopped.
It’s your class and it’s your story. You already know the correct cute answer (or so they think) and you are waiting to hear it from someone. They are trying to guess what you are thinking. It’s not true, of course, but they don’t know that. When the room is quiet and this is happening it’s game on and let the language start to be acquired!
Then, some answer is offered that feels right to you, about the 3rd or 4th or 5th one usually, and you say how obvious it was and how intelligent that kid is and say, “Applaudissez, classe!”
Now for the rest of the story whenever that newly accepted answer is mentioned in the course of the discussion you remember to look approvingly at the kid who offered it and they beam with happiness.
Make sure that the details come from the kids and the town you live in, or from the popular culture that they live in, or Hollywood, or anything that appeals to their imaginations. Make sure that everything you say is connected to the lives of your students.
It sounds so complicated if you are a new person. It is not complicated at all if you have been doing it for awhile as long as you have been getting support and feedback somewhere as you grow into it.
Of course, all this involves going against so much of what we have all been taught as teachers, which is be in charge, drive the story, say the right thing at the right time, be funny, etc. The fact is that if the teacher is the one driving everything forward, there is no “space” for the kids to join in the game.
If the details of the story are not provided by the students, they will not be interested in the story. The instructor must create spaces via artful questioning that allow for those spaces to be filled by students’ answers that are interesting to them. In this way, we learn to co-create with our students, which is a wonderful thing and a new idea in education.
How important are cute answers that are personalized to their interests as children? They will totally drive a story forward. If a story is boring and you experience the opposite of a volcano of answers erupting, which happens often (we call it the deer-in-the-headlights look), then, again, you have to wait it out until you get the right answer.
As soon as you get the right answer, one that is personalized to people or places in their lives, the deer-in-the-headlights look will be gone. A few chuckles will be heard. Then the mood in the classroom will completely change. Nobody will be nervous any more. The “look” will be replaced by smiles and laughter. The student who suggested the funny answer will be pleased with himself beyond words. The right detail does all of this for you, and more.
But if there is too much noise, if the rules are not being followed, you won’t be able to hear the right cute answer. And if you don’t wait out those uncomfortable and nervous silences that make most people quit storytelling when they are right on the verge of gaining command over it, then you will never get the cute answers. They will win.
By silencing the noise (by laser pointing to the rules when things are too noisy and using jGR and following up when needed with parents), and by staying in the moment of the story until a cute answer is suggested, the story will be saved. The kids will have been given their voice in the story because you had the courage to quiet them down with the rules if they were too noisy, or because you were able to stay in the moment of fear if they were too quiet.
If you react to the noise or the silence by taking everything over, jumping out of the moment of fear into something you can control, thus reacting to the fear of teaching which only teachers who take risks can possibly know, the resultant disenfranchisement of the kids will drag the story to a halt.
How do you know it’s the right detail? You just feel it. Sometimes the class gets a kind of Mind Meld where they insist together on a certain answer. Go with that one. It happens more often than you think. The class really does start thinking as a unit in story creation sometimes. It is kind of a magical thing when that happens. And don’t forget the magic of Professeur 2.
Resist the impulse to tell the kids the answer. This ruins the story. Hang out in the moment, in the discomfort, and don’t be afraid of the discomfort. When the right answer is offered, the class may even erupt in laughter, and your student will have one of those big “wall to wall” smiles on her face.
When that happens, you immediately tell her that this was exactly the answer. It was obvious! She was correct! Express true amazement that she knew that. Tell her how proud you are of her perfect suggestion at the perfect time in the story and I heap the praise on.
Nothing motivates like success. And what brings success? The personalized answers, those answers that come from their worlds.
What if you don’t know about their worlds? What I do is find about five kids in each class whom I trust and who have superstar qualities and I catch them in the hallway and I tell them my dilemna, that I need these answers about their worlds but I don’t know anything about their worlds so could they please just throw out some answers in class from their worlds, the worlds of teens, the pop culture they are in?
All it takes is one kid and one cute answer. As soon as you get that first cute answer and the class bursts out with approval and laughter, you will have made a great leap forward into the method, May Lee.
Will the laughter happen a lot? No, the method is not one big laugh fest and those who think it is are going to be sadly mistaken. Your only job is to keep the comprehension based instruction going. You don’t have to be funny and the cute answers are not required.
But, when they happen, it’s awesome. Take what they give you. Do your best to
1. stop the noise or
2. stay in the moments of silence
until the right answers appear – doing so will lead you deeper into the method, and each day the fear will lessen.
This is hard work and cannot be mastered in a few days. This work never ends. We never figure it all out. But, at least, our days as teachers can be leading us eventually one day to genuine fun when we do it this way.
You’ll know when it happens because you will have a big smile on your face and you will share it with us and we will then all smile and by your success we will know that we can all succeed because we tried and tried and tried again, through the tears of this most difficult work that we do for ourselves and for them, and we never gave up, because it is the right thing to do.
And we will gain a new kind of respect for ourselves, because we went out on the battlefield, and didn’t watch from the sidelines, like so many today are doing. They talk about it, we do it.